


Be More Chill: The Novel

by trans_fucking_atlantic



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz, Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz (Two River Cast) Actor RPF, Be More Chill - Ned Vizinni
Genre: Bisexual Brooke Lohst, Bisexual Christine Canigula, Bisexual Jeremy Heere, Canon Compliant, Could Be Canon, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, F/M, Gay Chloe Valentine, Gay Michael Mell, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pansexual Jake Dillinger, The Author can't pace chapters for shit, Trans Brooke Lohst, Trans Female Character, Transphobia, enjoy this hot mess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26565250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trans_fucking_atlantic/pseuds/trans_fucking_atlantic
Relationships: Brooke Lohst & Chloe Valentine, Brooke Lohst/Chloe Valentine (implied), Christine Canigula/Jeremy Heere, Jeremy Heere & Jeremy Heere's Father, Jeremy Heere & Michael Mell, Jeremy Heere/Brooke Lohst, Jeremy Heere/Chloe Valentine, Jeremy Heere/Michael Mell (implied), Rich Goranski & Jeremy Heere, Rich Goranski/Jake Dillinger (Implied)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	Be More Chill: The Novel

“Come on, come on! Go, go!” I mutter at my computer, watching the little " _loading…_ " icon swirl over and over and cursing the WiFi in my house. I’m waiting for some porn to load, and my brain is going to freaking explode. I have about five minutes until I have to get ready for school. I glance at my watch, huffing in frustration. Now, of course, it’s time to hit the road, which means I’ll be uncomfortable all day. I slam the top of the laptop down and stuff it into my backpack. Well, that really isn’t such a change. If I’m not feeling weird or super strange, my life is probably in utter disarray. I mean, freaking out is pretty much my “okay”. _Good morning, time to start the day!_ I groan in my head.

I rush to the bathroom, pulling up my shirt to check in the mirror for abs. There aren’t any, of course. I’m like a stick. The day you catch me playing sports一or doing fitness at all (does Wii sports count as fitness?)一is the day my dad puts on pants. Without any warning, my dad bursts into the room, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, just like I’d predicted. “Dad!” I whine, embarrassed that he almost caught me. “Haven’t you ever heard of privacy?!”

“We’re all men in this house,” my dad says, noting my disapproval of what he’s wearing一or rather, what he’s not wearing. “Pretend we’re in the army!”

I sigh. “Just… when I get home, please have pants on,” I plead, pinching the bridge of my nose.

“Ten-hut!” My dad salutes, marching military-style out of the bathroom. I grab my backpack, double-checking it has everything I need, and head outside to the bus station. I linger there, trying to decide how to get to school on the first day of junior year. _Should I take the bus or just walk?_ I feel my stomach filling up with dread. I panic, reaching in my pocket for my phone to look at my face in the front camera. When I get nervous, my whole face goes red, and that’s not a super attractive look on anyone, much less a gangly, loser-ish high school junior like me. _Dude,_ I scold myself mentally, _weigh the options calmly, and be still._ I consider the choices. A junior on the bus is killer weak, but if I walk I’m gonna straight up reek when I arrive, and my boxers will be all bunchy and my pits will sweat and一 _Stop thinking about it. You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing. God, I wish I had the skill to just be fine, and cool, and chill._

I grab a seat near the back of the bus.

High school, or at least my high school, is all about status and power. It’s like some sort of... food chain. And I’m at the bottom. I mean, I don’t want to be a hero, or some famous, talented, rich guy. I just want to stay in line. It’s not like I’ll ever be Robert DeNiro; just Joe Pesci is fine with me. So I follow my own rules: a set of laws I made up to stay alive. After all, I don't want to be special. For now, I just wanna survive junior year.

I push my way through the crowded hall before the bell and overhear a snippet of the hottest, most popular girl in school, Chloe Valentine, talking about something or other to her best friend and second-in-command, Brooke Lohst, and looking pissed. Jenna Rolan, the school gossip, stands on Chloe’s other side, wearing an expression that is half-excited and half-scandalized. “一so, Jenna Rolan said that Madeline told Jake”一Jake Dillinger is the most popular guy in school and Chloe’s boyfriend (ex-boyfriend, as of recently)一“‘I’ll only have sex with you if you beat me at pool.’ And then she lost at pool. Deliberately.”

“That is so awesome!” Brooke squeals.

Chloe glares at her, flipping her long, brownish-blonde hair over her shoulder. “Brooke!” she fumes.

“I mean… slutty!” Brooke quickly corrects herself, tugging one of her yellow curls.

Jenna Rolan chimes in, “And then, Madeline was all一”

“ _I’m_ telling the story, Jenna!” Chloe snaps, cutting her off. She whips around, suddenly noticing me. “That guy is like, so totally getting off on that!” She says, sounding disgusted.

I backpedal quickly, “Sorry… I was just trying to get to my locker…”

“That guy is so weird!” I hear Chloe exclaim to Brooke as I hasten away.

“I’ve, like, literally never noticed him,” Brooke replies, and I sigh. I guess I’m still as invisible as ever.

I’m so busy getting away from the girls (mostly Chloe, she kinda scares me) that I don’t look where I’m going, and walk right into Rich Goranski, who’s Jake’s best friend and number one thug, and the human embodiment of teenage bully. Rich has blond, spiky hair with a red streak in the front. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be a fashion statement or just represent the blood of his victims (namely, me).

“Yo, don’t touch me, tall-ass!” He growls at me. I’ll never know if that’s supposed to be an insult, or if the five-foot-five high-schooler just calls everyone that. I’m like, two inches taller than him. And also scared of him, I remember as he shoves me face-first against the wall and pins me there with one meaty forearm.

“I was just trying to get to my locker!” I protest. I hear a marker squeaking across my Pac-Man backpack but don’t dare turn around and look.

“You wash that off, you’re dead!” He threatens, then abruptly turns around to throw an arm around Jake (I have no idea how, the guy's about 10 inches taller than him), now completely ignoring me. Well, it could’ve been worse. I tell myself.

“Yo, Jakey D!” Rich hollers, punching Jake in the shoulder with the arm that’s not around his neck. “What’s the story with Madeline?!”

“Aw, man, I shouldn’t say,” Jake smirks at his shorter friend, and the two of them look weirdly gay. Honestly, they would be a pretty cute couple, if they weren’t complete assholes. “But it’s a good thing I rock at pool.” I quickly turn in the opposite direction and make my way down the hall, lest they catch me staring and decide to teach me another lesson. The vandalized backpack is enough for today, thanks.

I concentrate on navigating through the dangerous high-school hallway, focusing on a poster on the opposite wall, and avoiding all eye contact, just trying to remain unseen. When I finally get across the hall to the poster, I take a look. It’s a sign up for the after-school play club. It sounds fun, and it’s not like I have anything to do after school anyways except play video games with my best friend, Michael, and procrastinate on homework. Then I stop. It’s a sign-up sheet for getting called gay, and that’s really not what I need right now. End scene.

I hang a left and suddenly, I spot her. Christine. Christine Canigula is perfect and breathtaking and absolutely unattainable. She’s not popular or fake or anything, she’s just… herself. And it’s unbelievable. She’s smiling brightly (she always is, and it’s beautiful一I love her smile) and humming to herself as she walks down the hall, her short, shiny black hair swinging and her dress fluttering in the faint breeze. I grab my backpack in both arms and continue to marvel at her loveliness, suddenly snapping out of my trance when she addresses me directly.

“Excuse me?” Christine asks me, her voice musical and lilting.

“Y-yeah?” I stutter, my hands immediately feeling damp.

"Uh, I think someone wrote “BOYF” on your backpack?”

What? I look down at my backpack, confused. I see that someone, who had to have been Rich, has scribbled four messy letters, B-O-Y-F, onto the red fabric. “I一uh…” I blank, coming up short of things to say. “Thanks?” I try. Then I bolt.

_Wow, nice job, Jeremy. That was real smooth._ I’ve got no time to wallow in my mortification since the bell is about to ring, so I just try to put it out of my head and move along, sliding into my seat in Mrs. Williams’ first-period English just as the bell goes off, marking the official start to my junior year. While Mrs. Williams drones about prepositions, I daydream about what my life would be like if I wasn’t such a… loser. I reflect on my thoughts from earlier. I don’t want to be a celebrity, I just want some skills I can count on to not be a stuttering mess when a cute girl (namely, Christine) talks to me. I mean, if my nuts were any smaller, they'd pretty much be gone. _If I continue like this, the only thing I’m ever going to date is my MacBook hard drive._ I don’t wanna be famous, I just want to make it through high school.

When the lunch bell rings after third period, I practically leap out of my seat, heading straight for the cafeteria. Lunch is my favorite time of the school day: it’s when I get to hang out with my best (well, only) friend, Michael. “Michael!” I exclaim, thrilled, spotting him dancing in the hallway outside the lunchroom.

Michael Mell is… well… a geek. He likes out-of-print games, retro skates, and has a Pac-Mac tattoo on his left ankle. (He got it for free from a friend who does poke tats for his birthday last year, and I still don’t think his parents are even aware he has it.) But Michael and I have been friends since the third grade, and he’s my favorite person in the world. I wouldn’t give up Michael for anything.

“Jeremy!” He yells back, his gigantic headphones almost falling off his head. We do our little secret handshake一high-five one hand, high-five the other, then tap a foot against the other’s. “How’s it hangin’? Lunch is banging! 一” Michael talks like that sometimes一in rhyme, and with outdated slang. I used to think it was cool, but now it’s kind of… embarrassing? Well, he’s Michael, so I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it anyways一“I got my negimaki roll, and a slushy! I gotta admit, I’m feeling kinda cocky ‘cause the girl at Sev-Elev gave me a generous pour.” Michael indicates his cherry-flavored drink in his hand, the same color as his oversized, ever-present red hoodie, and pushes up his thick, black-framed glasses with his other hand. I smile and shake my head at the little dance he’s still doing.

“You’ve been listening to Bob Marley again, haven’t you?”

“Ohhh!” Michael points at me like I’ve just gotten the correct answer on some trivia game show. I’ll take What’s Going on in Michael Mell’s Head for $200, Alex. “This groove is hella gnarly一” There he goes again with the 80’s slang “一and the song’s almost over!” He pauses for a bit, holding up a finger in a give-me-two-seconds sort of way. “And… that was the end!” He declares, sliding his headphones down to rest around his neck. “Now, tell me. How was class? You look like shit. What’s wrong?”

Leave it to Michael to be brutally honest. We head over to an empty lunch table and sit down next to each other. Michael unzips his backpack pulls out a plastic package of supermarket negimaki (the only sushi he’ll eat一and he eats it all the time) and I take off my backpack and show him the writing.

“BOYF,” I read. “What does that even mean?” Michael looks confused for a second, then understanding dawns on his face. He slides his own backpack over, and I catch a glimpse of the letters “RIENDS” scribbled on his bag in the same messy writing that graces mine. When we line the packs up, they read “BOYF RIENDS”.

“My mothers would be thrilled!” Michael exclaims giddily. The glittery rainbow pride patch sewed to the sleeve to his hoodie sparkles in the weak sunlight, taunting me.

I drop my head down onto the table and sigh in frustration. “I hate this school.” Desperate to change the subject, I blurt out the first thing that pops into my head. “I wrote Christine a letter telling her how I feel.”

“That’s progress!” Michael cries, throwing his hands up in the air.

“...then I tore it up and flushed it!” I finish. I never actually intended to give Christine the letter. It was more of a… self-therapy thing. I should teach a class on "Dealing with Crushes That Will Never Like You Back".

“Oh…” Michael sighs, clearly disappointed.

“It’s still progress, right?!”

Michael stands up to throw the plastic sushi package away. “It’s all good. I saw on Discovery that humanity has stopped evolving!”

“That’s… good?” I question, squinting at him. I thought evolution was supposed to be helpful for the survival of humanity or something like that. Science class doesn’t really stick in my brain.

“Evolution is survival of the fittest, right? But now, thanks to technology一” Michael holds up his battered, beaten-up old phone, which hardly counts as technology一that thing was around before the dinosaurs "一you don’t have to be strong to survive! Which means there’s never been a better time in history to be a loser!” He draws the last word out, elbowing me. “So own it! Why try to be like them when you could be…”

I tune him out as Christine appears in the lunchroom, heading toward the sign-up sheet for the play club. It almost looks like she’s… “Signing up for the play!” I cut Michael off.

He looks confused. “Well, I was gonna say getting stoned in my basement, but…”

I nudge him and point to Christine. “No, I mean look who’s signing up for the play!”

“Christine!” We whisper together. I say it in an awed tone, while Michael sounds almost… exasperated. How could anyone be exasperated at _her_?

This is the perfect opportunity to spend more time with Christine! I feel my body moving, almost of its own accord, through the air to the sheet. I take a shaky breath, picking up the pen. Who cares if people think I’m lame? Christine signed, so I will too. I quickly scratch my name into the space below hers.

“GAY!” Someone (I think it’s Rich) taunts, pointing at me. I can hear people一probably just the six or so popular kids, but it sounds like the whole school一laughing at me.

“I like gay people,” Chloe tells Brooke, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes.

What does that even mean? I sigh for what feels like the twentieth time today (and it’s only lunch!). Junior year is off to a fantastic start for me so far. Let’s face it, I’m never gonna be the cool guy. I’m more… the one who’s left out My daydreams from earlier were just that: daydreams. If this was a book, out of everyone at school, I wouldn’t be the main character, and probably not even a side character. I’m just that barely-in-the-background kinda guy.

“Why can’t someone just help me out?” I mutter to myself. I need someone to teach me how to thrive. “Help me to more than survive,” I beg the universe, hoping someone out there will hear my plea.

Unfortunately, it looks like someone already did. I see Rich move away from me out of the corner of my eye, and I curse myself for saying that out loud. Hopefully, he didn’t hear what I said, but he definitely hears me talking to myself. Now he’s gonna tell Jake that I said that, and Jake’s gonna tell Chloe, and Chloe’s gonna tell Brooke, and Brooke’s gonna tell Jenna, and Jenna’s gonna tell everyone, and my social life will be ruined and I’ll have to change my name and switch schools and一

_Calm down._ I tell myself, heading to my next period. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if everyone knew I talked to myself and thought I was weird and that I should be in a mental hospital because一 Well, I’m not helping myself. But I’m not terrible at everything, I reason. If this were an apocalypse, I wouldn’t need any help to stay alive. (Video games are good for that.) But the zombie army’s yet to descend, and the period is almost over, so all I can do is try to pass the test and… well… survive.


End file.
